Gay marriage

It's obvious that this fight is over. In fact, I'm increasingly suspecting that we'll get a broad ruling from SCOTUS this summer on the issue rather than a narrow one. And by broad, I mean a decision that strikes down the bans erected in the states that presently have anti-equality amendments on the books.
If this comes to pass, then what is next? Do we agree that the right to marry is not the end-all-and-be-all when it comes to gay rights?
Have we been fighting the right fight for the past decade?

It's like any other civil right, we will need to be vigilant. Additionally we will need to practice diplomacy with a strong backbone.

Don't count your chickens before they hatch.

Do not compare gay marriage to what the black man has endured. That shit really pisses me off. It's hurtful and it has to stop.

R3 you're a troll and a fool

R3, A troll? A fool? For not wanting you to compare gay marriage to what the black man has endured? Racist much? Until you walk in my shoes you can shut the fuck up.

You're a tool, r3. An angry, shit-stirring tool. Get help.

R3: this post was written by a black gay male so you're pretty far off base.

OP

Why is everyone so sure SCOTUS will rule in our favor? Isn't it a bit foolish to be celebrating already? I hope you're right about this but it's still considered a very conservative court.

I've balanced this out in every possible way. There is no ethically judicious way to rule against gay marriage.
That being said, it's a conservative court, and we know that conservatives don't practice ethics, they preach 'perceived morals'.

Sure R7.

R3

What exactly makes you disbelieve that I'm black, R3?

You are a white lesbian. It's obvious you're not black. But keep on and pretending. As insulting and sad as it is, I expect nothing less from you.

R3

Gay civil rights has little in common with black civil rights.
Blacks cannot closet. The black civil rights movement isn't about a bunch of sex-addicted deviants whiining that they can't get off.
I think that straight men shouold use every argument the gays use in favor of co-ed everything! Apparently, straight men are so evil they should be presumeed perverted, yet gay men, in similar situations where other men are concerned, always behave in a pristine manner.
Any gay who wants equal rights can easily have them by not bringing their sexuality front and center. That they don't wish to do this shows that the gay-rights movement is actually borderline sexual-harassment or rape of the straight male.

"Blacks cannot closet". I agree with you there R13.

R3

The gay rights movement is indeed very different from the black rights movement. They are both however, civil rights movements. I don't see anywhere on this thread that implied they were so chill out R3.

**they were the same(sorry replying from my phone)

R15

Fuck off R15

R3

R3 I do actually agree with you that the two are not the same and I don't like it when people try to act like they are either. The OP was asking about the future of the gay rights movement, and your trying to threadjack so you can can complain. Just pay your $18 and start a new thread.
Anyway..... I think the fight is far from over for gay rights. Like R8 said the court is pretty conservative and there are still many states that don't have laws protecting gays from discrimination.

R18, I have paid my $18 bucks. Don't know what would make you think I wasn't a paid member. I had something to say on this thread and I'm glad I said it. It needed to be said. Get over yourself.

Ladies, ladies, you're ALL perpetual victims!

The gay civil rights movement has much in common with black civil rights. In both cases, a government is trying to legislate against a disfavored minority. Any differences are far less salient than the similiarities.
Many gay people cannot "closet," especially in a reactionary culture in which a lot of paranoid energy is devoted to identifying people's sexual identity. And there were actually many people of African-American descent who 'passed' for white. So this paradigm falls apart.
The similarities are far, far more significant than the differences. The people who say otherwise are generally:
1) PC gays not wanting to offend their straight masters.
2) anti-gay blacks who want to imagine that their oppression has been totally unique in world history, which it hasn't.

Go drown yourself R21

I see I've struck a nerve, r22.

Nailed%20it%2C%20I%27d%20say.

I'm black and have never passed for white, nor has anyone in my family. The small amount of folks who resemble Rashida Jones did it to live a life free from oppression. There are over 40 million blacks in this country and the majority have never been able to pass for white. Therefore, no closet for us to run into.

Well, I'm a flaming white boy, so there is no closet for me either.

Um, I never said that the majority of blacks passed, r24, nor did I argue that the motivations for passing were unsympathetic or beyond understanding. Pay attention.
And arguing that "closeting" frees someone from oppression seems a terrible error. I guess all Jews could convert or hide their religion. It STILL doesn't make discrimination against Jews right, nor does it mean that Jews have suffered less than other groups.

Give it a rest R26. You fucked up. Pure and simple

3 and others

If by "fucked up" you mean "said a simple truth," fair enough.
Either respond to the argument with a counterpoint or move on, r27.
Off-the-shelf cliches don't really make the sort of cutting response you're imagining they do.

There are not many more legislative rights that gay people need achieve after the legal right to marry. In Canada we have anti-hate laws regarding speech that Americans would view as an infringement of their first amendment.
I personally think the marriage equality push has not been the best use of energy and has drained energy from the acceptance of gay love itself. But the legal right must come, with no loopholes. It will not stop special interpretations and challenges for decades.
The non hetero-normative gays and lesbians will not be appeased simpley with the right to emulate traditional marriage and divorce. This is a human right, but not human rights.
I think American's often fight the wrong fight for the right basic principles. Marriage equality is another example. There is so much anger and hostility and lack of perspective involved in this cause that we don't see in my country or others where gays can legally marry, but are protected in more important ways.
Only in America would so many gays even dare to equate or compare gay marriage rights to race discrimination and the civil rights movement. They are not remotely the same thing, and gay rights have moved faster and further in forty years than civil rights did in two hundred years. America is a racist country with a specific and horrible history, but homophobia is generic and on a curve of acceptance everywhere in the world. It has no particular history.
Acceptance cannot be legislated and will involve many small legal battles and personal evolutions, plus time and exposure. It is simple minded to think that legislative change immediately changes thinking and feeling. But it is an important step. A change is gonna come, but not in all places at the same time.
A population so polarized and judgmental as what is found in the US, (including the gay population) makes the road to equality and acceptance longer and winding far past the last legal right. It is at least as much about what happens after that.
Gay people need to support each other, regardless of gender or their views on monogamy or marriage or politics. A long time coming, and no sign of it arriving here.
There are gay men facing death, mutilation and imprisonment in many countries and women denied the most basic of human freedoms in many parts of the world.
Gay Americans will soon have no excuse to remain in the narrow focus of who supports gay marriage or doesn't and must look past the backyard of their persecution and petty political grudges and try to transform this energy into advocating for the life and death issues of the less protected citizens of the world.

diplomat

You are a racist idiot. Hows that for a response?

R13 deserves to be lynched.

PS%20he%20is%20white

[quote]Do we agree that the right to marry is not the end-all-and-be-all when it comes to gay rights?
Other than the right to marry, there's just ENDA, which will seem like a piece of cake comparatively.
Other than that, it's a cultural, rather than a legal, battle.

[quote]Hows that for a response?
Predictable. Boring. Does little to address the argument presented.

Lynched? Really? That is beyond words. You are damn lucky we are not face to face.

3 and others

"3 and others"
Learn to speak for yourself, r34.

[quote]Many gay people cannot "closet," especially in a reactionary culture in which a lot of paranoid energy is devoted to identifying people's sexual identity. And there were actually many people of African-American descent who 'passed' for white.
The point is that no one should [bold]have[/bold] to hide in the closet, or pass for white. Everyone is entitled to the same rights without having to wear a disguise.

I don't disagree at all, r36. I can't imagine what in my post made you think I don't think along the same lines.

R20, please. Straight white men can be the whiniest bitches, always playing victims when someone calls them on their shit.

Sorry to break in but could somebody start a thread.
Richard Nixon likely committed treason and cost us 5 more years in Viet Nam to win election.

Stop playing victim and stop the man hate and I just might. You're pathetic. All you cunts are.

[quote]Any gay who wants equal rights can easily have them by not bringing their sexuality front and center.
Why should anyone have to hide who they love and want to share their lives with? There is one facet of the gay minority experience you've overlooked or simply chosen to disregard: isolation. For the most part black Americans grew up as part of a family that shared their skin color. They've known black friends, classmates, neighbors, and other members of the community. They've never felt like they were the only black person in the world. Yet that sense of isolation and the accompanying loneliness have long been a part of the gay experience in this country. The apparent nature of the color of one's skin compels people to deal with that difference in whatever way they will. People know (or quickly learn) where others stand as to their skin color. People of racial minorities have never had to fear losing the love of those people they love because of their skin. You know that the people who love you will always love you, will always have your back. But gay men and women face this fear all the time, even today. Countless gays men and women have been rejected, disowned and reviled because those people who they believed loved them turned against them when they came out. And it continues today.

You all are proving my points regarding the impropriety of equating civil rights with gay rights.
Black people can't hide in the closet and gay people have not been owned. Stop it.
America IS a racist country and not at all united among minorities, except in the most toilet trained liberal circles.
Practice some tolerance. Gay people should give up the comparison to slaves and black people should give up the judgement and internalized homophobic stance of their churches and communities. It takes guts to be out and gay, and to stand proud and clear to your family and community.
One thing that most gay blacks and whites have in common is at least for some time, they have lived on the DL. I'm not talking data lounge.
Data Lounge is very racist and insular, inhabited by angry white gay men/boys who often seem to understand no struggle other than their own. This results in a pretty vague collective statement.
I am Italian/Canadian gay man legally married to a black born in Trinidad. He hates it out here, and I find the racism and misogyny hard to take at times, but there are lots of cool smart funny men and women on DL.
Don't degrade this thread by turning it into a race argument. The question was about Gay marriage, no?

diplomat

R3 - You need to remember your place and STFU, boy.

....legally married to a black *man* born in Trinidad.

apologies

"America IS a racist country and not at all united among minorities, except in the most toilet trained liberal circles."
The US elected a black man as its president, twice.
I am no fan of the USA, but to call it a "racist country" is a bit ridiculous in 2013. Does it have millions of racists? Yes. Does racism define American society as it once did? No.

[quote]Black people can't hide in the closet and gay people have not been owned.
And as r45 points out black people have never faced discrimination from their own families, churches, schools and homes. Black people weren't persecuted during the Holocaust and they also no longer face legal discrimination.
I'm not a fan of the "suffering olympics" but the truth is I can play when it comes down to it.
Don't effin tell me what I can and can't compare. Gay people have been oppressed for millennia, Sorry, but what is this need of black people to be the most uniquely oppressed people on earth to whom no one can ever be compared? Ludicrous.

Racist R50. No surprise there.

[quote]I personally think the marriage equality push has not been the best use of energy and has drained energy from the acceptance of gay love itself.
Marriage equality is not just about the right to declare your love for the person of your choice. It includes inheritance rights, immigration rights, the right for civilians to be granted the rights and priviliges given to the spouses of the military. It involves taxation and insurance and so many other things that are basic to our existence in this society.
You might have been correct if it were just about love, but it isn't. Laws were enacted that exclude us. Marriage is one of the best ways to mitigate much of that inequality.

Just call people racist when you don't have a real response, r51. No surprise there.

R49
OK, so tens of millions of racists do not a racist country make?
I will reduce my statement.
"DataLounge is a racist state"

r46%2C%20the%20moral%20majority

The response is your a racist. Read your post you dumb cunt.

Yes, dear, r55. And that's no response at all, since it's your answer to any argument that yields a truthful picture you don't like.

R55, when calling someone a "dumb cunt" it does help the impact of your statement to know the difference between "you're" and "your".

Oh, for pete's sake. R55 is a troll and has been a troll since his very first post on this thread at R3. You can't argue with a troll; the only way to win is to ignore them. He's trying to get a reaction by writing stupid inflammatory shit and he's succeeding.

Bid deal R57. A cunt is still a cunt.

Fuck off R58.

Q.E.D.

r52
You cherry picked and quoted a phrase to disagree with. If you or any one else reads my post at r29, it is clear that I have full understanding of why legal rights and societal privileges are necessary for gay people in marriage and protected further in ways that Americans don't even fight for.
I am a gay man living in Canada, legally married for seven years.
I think you must have some other reason for taking issue with my post.
I do not believe gay marriage equality is comparable to the civil rights movement.
I think I have been clear. Why don't you try it.

[quote]It has no particular history.
Pure ignorance. Just because you don't know the history doesn't mean it doesn't exist, r62.
Says it all.

can r3 etc please address the significant fact, raised several times here, that most gay people are born into heterosexual culture, spend their formative years isolated from other LGBT people and are frequently disowned by their families when their orientation is revealed?
I think these are significant common traumas unique to the gay experience and I can think of no other minority that suffers from this.

What's so wrong with being racist? I'm racist and proud of it! I hate 99% of the human race, that's pretty racist.

When blacks fought for their rights, they drew parallels to women's rights.
The Gay rights movement is for CIVIL RIGHTS. It's part of the same movement, just by a different group. Every oppressed group faces different circumstances....and similarities.
The fact is, gay marriage is very much like interracial marriage.
Watch "Guess Who's Coming To Dinner?", the compare and contrast is amazing.

r64 and I can't begin to list all your other posts. Others can trolldar them.
We disagree, quite fundamentally, but I assure you I am not ignorant of the history of gay discrimination and persecution. I said it was not particular and this has offended you.
What would make you think that I am an apologist or a PC gay? I imagine my partner and myself are far more involved in gay political causes than you.
I simply do not agree and am offended by privileged white gays equating homosexual discrimination and persecution with slavery and hundreds of years of sanctified torture.
You say they are more the same than different, and there you display your ignorance. History.
I do not use your fancy language, but you made some fine points, until the repetition of same and your attacks revealed you to be a little less than open minded.
We disagree.

I'm not r3 (whom I think is a big drama queen) but the point about the closet is a very valid one.
I'm Latino and gay, and growing up I was bullied. I'd get called names all the time: mexican, illegal, poor...
I've never been bullied for being gay though. I came out at 16 and was never bullied over it. Everywhere I go people can tell I'm Latino within two seconds of looking at me, but nobody can ever tell I'm gay (unless they're gay themselves). When i'm around people who are racist/anti-immigrant, I always feel tension and can tell they are being guarded around me. When I'm around homophobic people, they are totally open and caring towards me. If they could tell I am gay as easily as they can tell I'm Latino, they would not behave that way around me. They would instead being guarded and tense towards me.
Gays do have it pretty well off as a minority group too. Gays are like the jews of sexual orientations. Small group but rather privileged and powerful. As a group, gays tend to be better educated and have more wealth. That wealth buys them "privilege" as a group. So comparing it to the civil rights movement is rather naive and/or ignorant.
I also believe that if all gay people were the color green, we'd all already have equal rights.

Not all gay people are white, educated, and wealthy.

Interesting, R70. I was gay bashed and spent three weeks in intensive care in a medically induced coma. The five guys who put me there called me faggot and cocksucker as they hit me with tire irons.
But you're right, being gay is a breeze!
How on earth can ANYONE say that gays rights aren't civil rights? Of course they are. And of course they aren't perfectly comparable to woman's suffrage or Jewish rights or black rights. Each had/s their own particular challenges and historical relevance. But they all fall under the same umbrella of social injustice that need/ed to be rectified.

"what the black man has endured"
Those things happened to other people. You never picked cotton or rode in the back of the bus. Stop trying to inherit other people's pain.
Gay people fight for their dignity every day. Do black people have to beg haters to be able to marry?

My pussy stinks.

Cheryl

[quote]I also believe that if all gay people were the color green, we'd all already have equal rights
This should be repeated a million times. The ability to hide in the closet has really been the problem of this movement even though many people see it as a plus.
If everyone who is gay and bisexual was open about it equal rights would have long since been decided.
People (in general) can't hide their race or their gender we have been forced to deal with that diversity.

Also saying the fight for equal gay rights is a civil rights movement like women's rights and black civil rights were does not mean they are exactly the same thing or the struggles have been the same. Just means it is a similar thing, working to make sure some maligned group in society has the same legal rights everyone else does. It is common sense.

[quote]If everyone who is gay and bisexual was open about it equal rights would have long since been decided.
Ignorant. Within living memory (and some places this is still the case), openly gay people were subject to violence, lobotomies, firings, imprisonment, murder, etc. Making it out as if gay rights has been slow to proceed because people were just too timid to speak up is downright retarded.

YYeah..gays have always had it easy. We've never had to endure laws targeting us, imprisonment because we were gay, loss of jobs because we were gay, inability to find housing because we were gay, beatings and killings because we were gay, being ostracized and demonized because we were gay and infected with a virus, blah blah.... All because we could "hide" the fact we were gay.
DL needs to be more diligent at calling out these freeper bastards. Learn the code words!!

[quote]equal gay rights is a civil rights movement
And especially since the first ones to make this comparison were black civil rights leaders in the 90s and early 2000s: Among the first people I ever heard make this connection in mainstream public forums were Coretta Scott King, John Lewis, Mildred Loving and other leaders of the civil rights movement, the ones who were THERE.
Sorry, but the ones who shriek that the struggles are not the same are generally people who didn't live through legal discrimination or preachers ripping people off, playing up prejudices and resentments as they always do.
The people who were there draw the parallel.

The argument of 'who had it worse' is absolutely ridiculous and pointless. Bean counting over horror stories. Grow up. ALL oppression is interrelated. If you don't understand that fact then you have no business talking about oppression.

W&W for R46!

He speaks the truth R81. Maybe you he should WW you. Iv'e had it with the racism in this thread. Iv'e posted about it but some things never change.

*Maybe he shoud WW you

^^ Oh, dear.

Why shouldn't gays get bored and have their sex-lives ruined like the straights?Unless you really,really love your partner,that's the future in marriage,particularly if you have a lot of children.

Jett

We haven't only been fighting for the right to marry, OP.

The whole same-sex marriage debate comes down to a secular interpretation of the Constitution versus a religious one. When viewed through that lens, there can be little doubt that men should be able to marry men and women able to marry women. Period.
The people who want to turn this into a racial issue are looking for something to argue about. It's a pointless argument not benefiting blacks nor the multi-color gays.

Marriage is the head domino. Legitimizing our relationships makes it impossible to continue with job discrimination, it will help to lessen the bullying in schools on down the road, it will force companies and governments to give us benefits, it makes complete sense to make marriage the lead in the battle. Let's fight one war not a hundred small ones.

Two points: First, I'd be very surprised if the Supreme Court in fact hands us a sweeping victory, especially since some on the liberal side (including Ginsberg) strongly disapprove of such decisions. (See the recent article on her in the New Yorker.)
Second, as to the race vs. sexual orientation thing, it is obvious that racial prejudice differs from a anti-gay prejudice in a non-trivial way; and history has made the former much more heinous than the latter. But the effect of prejudice on victims is often much the same: bitterness, repression, and so on. This thread proves that proposition over and over.

What are some of the financial benefits that gay spouses would get if gay marriage is legal?

[quote]Do we agree that the right to marry is not the end-all-and-be-all when it comes to gay rights
Maintaining hard-won civil rights should be Job One.
As we've seen, there are parts of American society that will never stop trying to re-establish a legal basis for discrimination in voting, housing, employment, reproduction, sports, and much else.
Be vigilant and ready.

The problem is the power. No matter the focus/object of human bigotry, there will always be those who think they are more worthy to rule than those they do not understand or to those they can relate. Human nature is to take that thought process and make it law.
Sad.
If we can accept a four legged creature as "man's best friend," why can we not accept others of our own kind as our best friend? Why can we not understand that if there was only one true color in/of life, there would be no gray, there would be no lavender, no pink, no cornflower, no mint green. We would all be bland in one way or another. We would lose our "variation of a theme."
Here in the USA, we're taught that our individuality is what makes us special. That is, until we all make a connection with those like us. Then we become an agenda.
It's all about the power.